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On my maternal grandmother's side, one way back relation was of the origional group sent to found Ulster. While a friend was busy in downtown LA, I went to the library and it was one of the few family names I was sure of the spelling. They had a picture and he *looked* like a relative too. I only wish I still had the notes and picture and could remember the name. At the time I didn't really know much of the history. They eventually became the beginnings of the Houstin family.
There's a few later emigrants from Scotland itself, and a major English branch, but pretty much the rest seem to be scots Irish. I was raised with examples that exemplified the drive that got them here and when life turned hard their examples mattered.
Time goes on, the world changes, but we are still touched by our ancestors in they ways each generation teaches the next to deal with life.
On my maternal grandmother's side, one way back relation was of the origional group sent to found Ulster. While a friend was busy in downtown LA, I went to the library and it was one of the few family names I was sure of the spelling. They had a picture and he *looked* like a relative too. I only wish I still had the notes and picture and could remember the name. At the time I didn't really know much of the history. They eventually became the beginnings of the Houstin family.
There's a few later emigrants from Scotland itself, and a major English branch, but pretty much the rest seem to be scots Irish. I was raised with examples that exemplified the drive that got them here and when life turned hard their examples mattered.
Time goes on, the world changes, but we are still touched by our ancestors in they ways each generation teaches the next to deal with life.
Nightbird,an interesting and dare I say poignant post. Yes I think we are touched by our ancestors. I think in our 'minds-eye' we can go back and picture what the people in those days went though. How life was one big struggle to survive against the elements and I have to say, other people. We have it easy today in comparision.
Sam Houston's folk came from Ulster. County Antrim I believe. Of course though the years different spellings of the name does happen. Houston is still a fairly common name in Ulster.
Never knew to just recently that Burt Lancaster's grandparents were from Belfast. I would guess that Lancaster would be an English name. It said in the book 'God's Frontiersmen' that the Scots in Ulster so predominated that though time the name Ulster-Scots came to be applied to the English,Welsh,and Huguenot people in Ulster also.
I came across an old newspaper and there was an article with the heading
Londonderry and Derry are side by side in New Hampshire....John Trew encounters some Ulster place names on a 50,000 mile quest across the USA.
Since boyhood days I've been fascinated by epic stories of enterprising settlers like Davy Crockett who conquered and tamed the American wilderness against all odds (ok he says it was his boyhood days)
Nose-deep in a biography in the Holywood Road library in Belfast,I discovered my hero was the great-grandson of a Castlederg couple.
They were among the first wave of Ulster Scots emigration in the early 18th century. Many thousands of families from here settled along the pioneer trails of the Old West - and help shape the destiny of the United States. I carried my childhood obsession into manhood,and since 1979 I've travelled about 50,000 miles in leisurely pursuit of the pioneers.
The nearest I've come to utilising real pioneer-type transport was the canoe I paddled along the alligator-infested waters of the Hillsborough River in west-central Florida. The river runs though downtown Tampa into the Gulf of Mexico,passing though Hillsborough County on its way. The county was named after the Co Down village,birthplace of Wills Hill (later Lord Hillsborough),who was colonial administrator.
Belfast,upstate New York,is en route to Ulster County,which runs along the west of the Hudson Valley between Woodstock (venue of the legendary rock concert featuring our own Van Morrison who lived there for a time) and Clintondale.
We met some lovely people in Bangor Michigan,between Detriot and Chicago. When my wife and I lived in Ann Arbor,we would take trips to the likes of Antrim and Boyne City on the shores of lake Michigan. Londonderry and Derry are two adjacent towns in New Hampshire,which are the real starting point for anyone following the pioneer trails.
They were the first Ulster Scots transatlantic settlements and a big sign alongside Londonderry's Civil War Memorial also confirms it as the site of America's first potato patch.
Before the Ulstermen arrived,the area had been called Nutfield by the New England colonists. The new arrivals would have none of it so they named the place in honour of their native country - twice.
Ulster-American heroes and Presidents are honoured everywhere. Houston was the capital of General Sam Houston's Texas Republic,while Carson City,Nevada's capital is named after Kit Carson,whose statue also dominates Pioneer Park in downtown Denver.
Johnston City,Tennessee (President Andrew Johnson); Jacksonville,Florida (President Andrew Jackson has many towns,avenues and squares named after him,including the famous Jackson Square in New Orleans) and Knoxville,Tennessee,(in tribute to Henry Knox,Secretary of War in 1780s).
I was suprised to discover during my visit to Gettysburg,for example,that the trumatic battle was fought across land farmed by the Gettys of Londonderry before they struck it rich(and how) in the oil business.
Another instance was the revelation that the McElhinney family,whose name name is on a billion tabasco sauce bottles hiding in cupboards worldwide,are of Ulster descent. Unearthing nuggets like that really does put a bit of zest into my quest.
Not to quibble but I've not seen any solid evidence that Kit Carson is an Ulter-Scot. He may just be of plain ol' Scottish and English heritage. There were some Scots who arrived directly from Scotland or by way of other places than Ulster. Alexander Hamilton was one of those.
Not to quibble but I've not seen any solid evidence that Kit Carson is an Ulter-Scot. He may just be of plain ol' Scottish and English heritage. There were some Scots who arrived directly from Scotland or by way of other places than Ulster. Alexander Hamilton was one of those.
Acccording to the following link, Kit Carson was of scot-irish descent, at least on his father's side.
As far as I'm aware..what I've read etc,he had Ulster-Scots blood and his people came from somewhere in Co Antrim. I'll see if I can find out anymore about him.
Just fairly recently I learned there was another fella called Kirker,think it was James Kirker another Ulster-Scot from Co Antrim. Apparently he was a bit of a wild man,had fought against the Indians and then was made some sorta of chief among the Indians. Then he fought against the Mexicans and then for them.
Carson is a fairly common name in Ulster and of course Ulster's founding father was called Carson. Though a Dubliner his people were from Scotland.
The Carsons were Presbyterians and seemed to have moved about a bit but it seems that Kit's grandfather was born in Ulster.
"In the last part of the 1600’s, the Scots were able to worship as Presbyterians even though they were still persecuted and could not hold political office. During this period and throughout the 1700’s there continued to be a constant struggle between the church and the government, and preachers such as Alexander Harvey Carson were persecuted or exiled. By 1700 many of the Presbyterian Scots, including Alexander Harvey Carson, fled Scotland to Ulster, Ireland where land was cheaper but there was little political freedom. William Carson, the third son of Alexander (and Kit Carson’s grandfather), was born in Ireland in 1715, and a few years later Alexander Harvey Carson moved his family to a small town in England named Bradninch near a George Boone who was a weaver.
A close relationship began between Alexander (the great-grandfather of Kit Carson) and George (the grandfather of Daniel Boone). The Carsons and Boones had heard tales of rich fertile land and beautiful rolling acres in Pennsylvania that could be easily acquired and more importantly, they were told of the religious freedom in America. Both families decided to leave for America together. By the time the Carsons and the Boones left England, Alexander had four sons: John, born 1710; Samuel, born1712; William, born 1715; and James, born 1717. The eldest three sons were born in Ulster and James was born in England. The Carsons and Boones sailed on August 17, 1717 and arrived in the port of Philadelphia on October 10, 1717. A fifth son, Alexander, was probably born shortly after arriving in the colonies.
William being a faithful supporter of the Presbyterian Church later donated the land upon which the Concord Presbyterian Church was first built. Shortly after arriving in North Carolina, William married Eleanor McDuff in 1752 in a brief Presbyterian ceremony in a log church. Lindsey (Kit’s father), the first child of this marriage, was born on August 1, 1754. Subsequently, Andrew was born on March 1, 1756, Robert on July 20, 1759, Sarah in 1762, Eleanor in 1767 and Alexander in 1769. William’s son, Alexander moved as a young man to what is now the state of Mississippi and is the first Carson on record to go west of the Mississippi River.
I've found the discussion of Ulster-Scots to be interesting, as my English-born grandfather married a McCarrick of Ulster ancestry. Years ago I had the good fortune to read a book by author Bil Gilbert titled Westering Man: The Life of Joseph Walker, Master of the Frontier. Even better, I later met the author. If you haven't read the book, it's a wonderful portrayal of Joseph Rutherford Walker, one of many mountain men and explorers of the west, including the intrepid Jedediah Smith, also of Scots-Irish descent. Except for Smith, Walker had few peers as a western explorer and, unfortunately, he has been largely forgotten by the general public.
One of the interesting points made by Gilbert and others, is that the Scot-Irsih were neither Scottish nor Irish, "...but rather a mixed lot of Danes, Angles and Saxons who had been pushed north by various post-Roman invasions of Great Britain." They had the misfortune of being caught between the " ... almost perpetually warring highland Celts in the north and the English to the south. As both participants and sullen bystanders whose welfare was inconsequential to either side, they were regularly plundered, imprisoned, raped and massacred. When there were lulls in in the conflicts, the lowlanders raided, stole from and killed each other."
It was just this hardscrabble background that made the lowland Scots a formidable force. Of course, this wasn't lost on the English aristocracy who weren't averse to playing off one people onto another.
As Gilbert said, the lowland Scots became the "disposable people." Their poverty and wretchedness made it fairly easy for James I to move them into the north of Ireland to counterbalance the similarly impoverished and wild Irish. The ruse worked well for the English, as the Scots were more than a match for the Irish. As the Ulster Scots prospered they became too unruly for the English and their growing textile industry was a threat to English manufacturers.
Moving forward a few years to 1715, recruiting agents came from North America . By this time, economic conditions in Ulster were very bad and the chance to emigrate to the colonies met with great acceptance. James Logan, William Penn's executive secretary, himself an Ulster native, enthusiastically supported the move. He was to later rue the day, as the new arrivals became very troublesome, squatting on land without inquiring as to ownership. He was later to write that "the settlement of five families from the North of Ireland gives me more trouble than fifty of any other people." He went on to say they were "troublesome settlers to the government and hard neighbors to the Indians."
Undoubtedly, Logan and others was much relieved when the lure of new land drew many of the Scots-Irish in the migration into the Great Valley, that is, the Cumberland in Pennsylvania and the Shenandoah in Virginia. The Scot-Irish, along with many German families, were the first to make permanent settlement in the Great Valley and It marked the first time that the frontier was appreciably moved west. The restless Scot-Irish were to move it west many more times.
Diogenes,thats a great summing up of the people. Some of that I've came across myself. Some of it I haven't. As you say they were used, maybe because of who they were,the temperment they had. Or maybe it was because of how they were treated they developed that type of temperment. But whatever,it stood them in good stead later on.
In America they were used again..this time as a buffer against the Indians. They responded to the attacks of the Indians and it wasn't a very nice time for all concerned. They retaliated very strongly and the Paxton Boys especially 'took no prisoners'. My own impression of them was that they are a re-active people rather than pro-active and when all the pent up feelings explode...watch out.
They were and are a people who have been shoved about from pillar to post and maybe because of that became vary wary of those outside their own circle/clan.. Its perhaps still a bit like that in their Ulster homeland
Just to mention Fort Laramie was built by an Ulsterman,and the first white man to set eyes on Yellowstone was an Ulsterman. There is a trapper mentioned in God's Frontiersmen'. I'll have a look and see if its the same one you mentioned. I'll also have a look for the book you have.
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